Facts about China: ELDERLY, CHILDREN & ADOPTION

China facts: ELDERLY

In 2009, China’s proportion of people aged 60+ rose at the fastest clip in history—bringing the total to 167.14 million people, or 12.5 percent of China’s total population.
[China National Committee on Aging; Reuters “China’s population aging at fastest clip ever” July 13, 2010 ]

By 2015, China’s 60+ population is expected to grow to over 200 million, according to Li Bin, director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
[Reuters “China’s population aging at fastest clip ever” July 13, 2010 ]

By the middle of the century, China’s projected 438 million senior citizens will outnumber the entire U.S. population. Fully a third of China’s population will be age 60 or older, compared to about a quarter in the U.S. “The problem is the age wave is coming while China is still relatively poor,” said Richard Jackson of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China may be the first major country to grow old before it grows rich.”
[ The Los Angeles Times “China’s elderly will overwhelm the nation” July 6, 2009 ]Only about a third of China’s workforce is covered by a pension system; most of those covered are urbanites. Average life expectancy in China is 73 years — up a stunning 32 years since the PRC was founded 1949.
[ The Los Angeles Times “China’s elderly will overwhelm the nation” July 6, 2009 ]

Today in China there are 5.4 working-age adults for every elderly person, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That ratio will plummet to 2.5 by 2030 and to 1.6 by 2050.
[ The Los Angeles Times “China’s elderly will overwhelm the nation” July 6, 2009 ]

China Facts: CHINESE CHILDREN & YOUTH

As recently as 1965, Chinese women were bearing an average of six children. Today, that figure is down to 1.5 because of China’s One-Child Policy.
[ National Geographic cover “Population 7 billion” Jan. 2011 ]

China has a “wildly skewed sex ratio” with too few females, because of the One-Child Policy. China’s sex ratio for the generation born between 1985 and 1989 was 108 (already just outside the natural range of 103-106). Today, the ratio is over 120, which is “biologically impossible without human intervention”.
[ The Economist “The worldwide war on baby girls” March 4, 2010 ]Up to 3 million babies are hidden from the government every year because of the One-Child Policy, according to research by Liang Zhongtang, a demographer and former member of the expert committee of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission.
[ The Telegraph UK “Chinese hiding three million babies a year” May 30, 2010 ]
Click here for more info on: One-Child Policy for Dummies: A brief history, facts, and pros & cons.China’s One-Child Policy has resulted in a “Little Emperor Syndrome,” in which single children are spoiled by the attention from parents and grandparents. These children were described by demographics expert Cai Feng as “more likely to be spoiled and self-centered”.
[ Wikipedia “Little Emperor Syndrome”; Newsweek “China’s New Empty Nest” March 1, 2008]Chinese parents send spoiled Little Emperors to a military-style boot camp in Hangzhou, named “West Point”. Minor offenses are punished by being forced to swallow a spoonful of hot chili sauce or chew on a bitter herb that turns the tongue yellow for hours. The worst offenders get a whipping, minus their shirts, even in the dead of winter, and in front of the entire school. The founder, Mrs. Wan Guoyin says, “We do it more for the humiliation than the pain…The goal is to give them a memorable lesson.”
[Los Angeles Times “`Little Emperors’ Learn the Hard Way in China” Aug. 27, 2006 ]
Click here for “Chinese babies don’t wear diapers” and more, in China facts: WEIRD & ODDBALL.

China facts: CHINESE ADOPTION

China is the number one source of adoptions in the U.S., followed by Guatemala, Russia, and Ethiopia.
[ Wikipedia “International adoption” ]

Since the early 1990s, some 80,000 Chinese children have been adopted abroad, the majority going to US families.
[ The Boston Globe “In China, dark side of adoption exposed” Sept. 27, 2009 ]

In 2007, China imposed new restrictions on foreign adoptions, barring applicants who are unmarried, over 50, obese, take certain medications, fail to meet certain benchmarks in financial, physical or psychological health (including AIDS and cancer).
[The New York Times “China Tightens Adoption Rules For Foreigners” Dec. 20, 2006 ]

In 2008, a adoption scandal broke out after some Chinese parents came forward with harrowing stories of their babies being taken by coercion, fraud, or kidnapping – sometimes by government officials who covered their tracks by pretending the babies were abandoned. The parents claimed that officials were motivated by the US$3,000 per child that adoptive parents pay orphanages.
[ HBO 2008 documentary “China’s Stolen Children”; The Boston Globe “In China, dark side of adoption exposed” Sept. 27, 2009 ]

CHILD KIDNAPPING & TRAFFICKING

Between 2,000 and 3,000 children and young women are kidnapped every year in China, according to the public security ministry. However, China’s state-controlled newspapers have reported that the real figure as high as 20,000. The majority of cases remain un-solved.
[The Times UK “Kidnappers swoop on China’s girls” May 31, 2009 ]

More than 10,000 women and nearly 6,000 children were rescued in a 2009, during the largest crackdown on human trafficking, according to China’s Public Security Ministry. More than 15,000 people were arrested over 17 months and two ringleaders of a gang that had sold 46 children for up to $6,000 each were sentenced to death.
[ Time Mag. “The Searchers” Nov. 25, 2010 ]
Click here for “The Chinese Zorro who tracks down kidnapped women & children” in China facts: WOMEN & BRIDE KIDNAPPING.